Anti-abortion candlelight vigil held in Graham

Tuesday

Jan 22, 2013 at 12:01 AMJan 22, 2013 at 10:50 PM

Steve Huffman/Times-News

GRAHAM — Barbara Holt told those gathered Tuesday at Court Square that abortion has claimed 55 million lives since it was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973. Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of the Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade decision. Holt, an Alamance County resident, is president of N.C. Right to Life. But Holt told those gathered for the candlelight vigil sponsored by Alamance County’s Right to Life to remember the positive things their efforts — the marches, rallies and lobbying of legislators — have produced. “The answer lies not in the number that have died, but rather in the number of lives that have been saved through our faithfulness over the years — doing all that we could do,” she said. About 200 people gathered at the Square on a cold, clear night. They listened to Holt and Amy Huffman, president of Alamance County’s Right to Life, and watched a video that highlighted the growth of an embryo from conception to birth. Finally, they circled the courthouse with lighted candles as they prayed for the lives lost to abortion. Holt praised the group and others like them for having an effect on the decline in abortions among teens. She said that since legislators passed the Parental Consent for Abortion law in 1995, abortions performed on teens dropped from 19.6 percent of all abortions in 1996 to 12.4 percent in 2011. Holt said the Legislature also in 1995 eliminated the state abortion fund that she said accounted for more than 4,400 abortions a year. “Statistics show that when we don’t pay for abortions with our tax dollars, we get fewer abortions,” Holt said. She said the number of abortions in North Carolina dropped from 25,200 in 2010 to 21,933 in 2011 as a result of the Woman’s Right to Know law. The law requires a woman wait 24 hours from the time she receives information about an abortion until the abortion is performed. Holt encouraged those gathered on the Square to stay in contact with their state legislators to make them aware of their feelings concerning abortion. “Fortunately, for Alamance County, all of our members of the state Legislature are very pro-life,” she said. “They want to hear from you. They need to hear from you even though they are pro-life.” Huffman joked that Holt has been active in the drive to have Roe v. Wade overturned almost from the get-go. “It’s been 40 years, and I think Barbara was at it 20 minutes after the decision was handed down,” she said. The Rev. David Tessmann, pastor at Burlington’s Redeemer Lutheran Church, spoke a prayer at the gathering. He referred to the unborn as “the weakest among us in the land of the free.” Graham’s Yvonne Webster has been attending the annual rally for years. She said she remembered seeing pictures of the children killed last month in the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., and couldn’t help but sense a connection between them and the unborn lost to abortion. “Millions are killed through abortion and we never see their faces,” Webster said. “What these kids could have been, we’ll never know.”